- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: NYRB Classics; Tra edition (Nov 30 2004)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1590171152
- ISBN-13: 978-1590171158
- Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.4 x 20.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #293,318 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Universally recognized as one of the founding figures of modern drama and theater, Pirandello is virtually unknown here as a novelist and short story writer. Written in 1904, this novel touches on some of the themes that reverberate throughout his work: illusion and reality, the enigmas of identity, art and life. The narratorprotagonist is something of a buffoon, a figure out of comic opera, the impoverished son of a once-rich family stripped bare by a villainous swindler of an estate manager. Living a dreary life as an archivist, tired of his dismal marriage, plagued by an intrusive mother-in-law, tormented by creditors, he slips away to Monte Carolo and hits it big. While he is gone, a suicide in his hometown is mistakenly identified as the very same Mattia, who, being an enterprising scamp, changes name and identity, marries anew in adopted territory, fakes his own suicide and returns to the orginal scene as his old self, to the consternation and confusion of everyone. Comedy descends to farce and slapstick here and there; but no harm done. Essentially the novel is a lark, with some shadowy overtones; and the portrait of town lifethe "biographies of worms," Mattia saysis drawn in acid.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Three writers of the twentieth century have given voice to—and leant their names to—our disquiet, our injuries, and our fear; at the same time, through the catharsis or measure of contemplation, which are among the revelations of art, they have helped us to live by tempering our anxiety and desperation; and I am using this term, tempering, in a musical sense…of striking a more pure, more cristalline, more vibrant note. These three writers are Pirandello, Kafka, and Borges.
— Leonardo Sciascia
Very funny, often hilariously so. It is also moving, disturbing, tragic. For Pirandello saw comedy residing in “the fundamental contradiction … between human aspiration and frailty,” a contradiction that induced “a certain perplexity between weeping and laughing.”
— The New York Times Book Review
— Leonardo Sciascia
Very funny, often hilariously so. It is also moving, disturbing, tragic. For Pirandello saw comedy residing in “the fundamental contradiction … between human aspiration and frailty,” a contradiction that induced “a certain perplexity between weeping and laughing.”
— The New York Times Book Review
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
The idea, or rather the suggestion that I should write this book was given me by my reverend friend, Don Eligio Pelegrinotto, the present librarian of the Boccamazza collection, to whom I will entrust this manuscript as soon as I have finished it, if I ever do. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The idea, or rather the suggestion that I should write this book was given me by my reverend friend, Don Eligio Pelegrinotto, the present librarian of the Boccamazza collection, to whom I will entrust this manuscript as soon as I have finished it, if I ever do. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
You can't escape from yourself,
By
This review is from: The Late Mattia PASCAL (Paperback)
This book is very sad...it tells the story of a man who can't cope whit life's responsibilities and whit himself. A strange accident causes him to be believed dead, and he thinks he can assume a new identitiy and take on a new life. But he can't escape himself, and his new life shall be as unsatisfying and full of disillusions as the first. The clou of the book is the tragic melancholy of the seance...when he himself is evoked as his own spirit.Existentially spooky!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book!!!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Late Mattia Pascal (Paperback)
I would definetely recommend this novel. I enjoyed it very much. It helped me to come in contact with my innerself, and it made me think of things that i had never given any thought to before.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The brain is the piano and the player the soul,
This review is from: The Late Mattia Pascal (Paperback)
Italian author, winner of the Novel Prize in 1934, Luigi Pirandello is better known for his plays, forerunners of the theatre of the absurd. In this novel, the main character Mattia Pascal faces an economic downfall and a marriage without love. He decides to escape from this situation and in a stroke of luck wins a fortune in Monte Carlo. He takes a new identity, gains total freedom, shams death but the ghosts of his past existence, and the discovery of true love will spoil his new life.The plot is neatly constructed and the dialogues between Mattia Pascal and some of the characters are enlightening, expressing Pirandello's philosophical outlook on life as well as reflecting biographical elements. The author is concerned with the ambiguity of truth and reality, the problem of identity and illusion. For him self-identity only exists in relation to others, as much as man is a social creature, unfortunately bound to social conventions. Man creates his own reality and lives in a world of illusions, always bound one way or the other to the past. The resulting paradox is that illusion may often become more real than reality! Mattia Pascal is unable to cope with his total freedom which strucks him as being shapeless and aimless. Only the love he feels for Adriana will help him brake away from his suffocating mask. Upon returning to his former town he finds his wife has remarried and he is destined to become the shadow of a dead man. Pirandello held a pessimistic outlook on life, believeing that his time was one of distress and darkeness (early 20th century), democracy was nothing more than tyranny disguised as freedom, and philosophical speculations nothing more than a product of our imagination. "When death comes perpetual night will great us after the misty daylight of our illusion, or rather, we will be left to the mercy of Being, which will only have shattered the vain forms of our reasoning."
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